Thank you for all the people that reached out yesterday to me and shared that I could contribute something to their life.

I am grateful and happy that you were courageous to share it with me. I appreciate it deeply.

Todays topic is very important for me. Please make up time to read this.

Understanding this has helped me transform my life into a new positive way and changed the way I view life now. It can also change yours too.

First I want to clarify what I understand under depression. There are a lot of people that have adopted the medical definition of depression. Meaning that depression is a life long holding that someone carries with them and through that they are depressed.

For me depression is a stage of life and is completely normal and necessary.

I want to share with you a story of personal experience:

At the beginning of september 2016 I injured myself. I injured my lower back as most of you know. This was the beginning of my depression. I injured myself and started to ask myself: How did it come to this? Starting to questioning everything I did for the last year and understanding why this happened. Immediatly I felt that this injury should not be necessary and that it is a sign for me to change things up.

I have been training the past year 2 times a day doing 3-5 Workouts a day. I got huge success in the beginning with it. Huge jumps but then when the time was getting closer and closer to summer I hit a plateau. Not seeing any results. Training my ass off. Even got a personal coach for me. I did not see progress.

Coming back from vacation. I felt immediatly that it was wrong and not right for the stage of my life to jump back to training like I did before. But what did I do? I hit it even harder and then my body told me to stop.

At that time my only goal was to become a competitor in CrossFit. Investing everything I have money, time, effort and heart to attain that goal. After the injury I started questioning if that is really what I want to be. I knew the answer immediatly: NO!

I took a step back and reorganized my training. Not doing anything that causes the pain to get worse. Training around my injury. Just doing our classes at our crossfit box nothing else. I started to enjoy training and more suprisingly I started to make personal records.

I was really quite during that time. I knew I was in a depression and how things went in the past were not the way they should go in the future.

My mood was good. I was not sad but I felt that everything is going to change.

I was looking for the signs. Being aware of my body. Listening to what my mind was telling me. Looking for the opportunities to present themself.

I got deep again into meditation and reading books about change and awareness in life.

I knew what the next step was for me I felt it deeply.

The step was: Losing the false identity of being a competitor that I have adopted to myself and pursuing my real passion.

Helping and serving people to achieve their dreams. In short: Be a coach.

There is nothing wrong with being a competitor but it just was not my passion. I forced it onto myself.

I broke down completely at the beginning. Losing that identity that I have built around myself was hard. For the last 2 years that was the only goal in my mind.

Slowly through giving up that identity I understood what it means to focus on the things you can control and that it is only you against yourself.

I started helping other people more. In my job at the crossfit box. Outside of it. I discovered my passion again which was helping people and I wanted to share it with as many people as I can.

The idea came up of creating a blog. Sharing my experiences and insights to help other people achieve their dreams.

I could not follow through immediatly because I was afraid.

Afraid of being judged. What others will think about me?

Then my opportunity came up. Grounding camp with Elliott Hulse. Everybody who knows Elliott knows that he is everything about expressing yourself with your body. I knew he was the teacher that I was searching to guide me through this last step of depression.

I came to him being completely vulnerable and open. Not identity. Nothing just pure me.

I talked about the 2 most powerful words in a blog post couple days ago.

I had the problem saying yes to myself. After I expressed myself saying yes with my whole body the decision was made.

I am going to create my own blog! Nothing is going to stop me from it!

I felt that fear again of being judged before publishing my first article. I did it anyway I overcame my depression and now people I even did not meet in person are sharing with me their stories and thanking me for helping them.

Why did I tell you this story?

Depression is normal and a good thing. The best achievers on the world started out somewhere being really depressed and ending talking about being the best thing that could ever happen to them.

Depression is a stage of life. It isn’t forever! It is like the day. Sun goes up. Sun goes down. You eat and you go to take a shit. Things come in. Things come out. It is summer and hot. Then it begins to snow and it is cold.

It is a stage of life.

I recognize now immediatly if I am going into a depression. This happens most of the time when the your whole world you used to know does not make sense anymore. Things and person that were great to you at the beginning are not longer great. Friends that you could identify yourself with are no longer supporting you or you can’t identify yourself anymore with them. Your parents don’t understand you. There are 1000s of examples.

Complete chaos arises to the point where you can’t take it no more!

This is the turning point. Crying in your bed with not knowing what to do and not seeing the light of the tunnel. Being close to giving up.

This is where the stronger version of you is waiting to emerge and transform you into a stronger version of yourself.

Out of chaos arises order.

It is the same with training. You shock the muscle. It breaks down. It starts to rebuild itself and even get stronger so that it doesn’t happen again.

This is the same with going through a depression.

I want to share with you a different perspective.

Do not see it as an end. See it as a new beginning.

The harder the depression or the downfall is the greater the rise will be.

The more challenging oceans a sailor had to endure and overcome the stronger and wiser he will be.

Thomas Edison the inventor of the light bulb also went through a depression. He tried 10.000 different ways that did not work. He did not see it as something that is going to last forever and that he is trapped. He saw it as an opportunity that he has found 10.000 ways that did not work.

Depression is normal and even necessary. Be grateful for it. It allows you to reorganize yourself and grow into a stronger version of yourself.

Every time I go through a depression I come out as a different person doing more beautiful and fulfilling things.

Here is what I invite you to do if you find yourself in a depression:

do not identify yourself with your current circumstances or with the situation you are experiencing

see it as you see winter. Winter always lead to spring and summer.

be aware of what is happening to you and see the opportunities presenting in front of you

Every single one of us is going to go through a depression.

This is not an end. This is not how it is meant to be for you.

On the other side there is a stronger version of you waiting.

A more beautiful life waiting on the other side.

My biggest depression has opened up the path to discovering my purpose and helping other people achieve their dreams.

Don’t see it as an end see it as an opportunity.

It always helps to share it with somebody. You are welcome to share it with me personally I would be grateful for that opportunity to help you.

Reach out to me with a private message over my social media (Facebook, Twitter or Instagram)

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